England Woodland Access Data for Planning

Woods For All informs internal staff about woodland access provision, particularly for planning new woodland creation schemes to link or improve public access. It is derived from multiple sources, primarily the National Forest Inventory England 2022. The dataset is maintained by the UK Forestry Commission and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial relationships between existing woodlands and potential new creation schemes using geospatial boundaries.
• Identify gaps in public access networks by overlaying woodland inventory data with footpath or road layers.
• Model the impact of new woodland planting on local accessibility metrics derived from the National Forest Inventory.
• Prioritize areas for improving woodland access based on internal planning criteria and inventory attributes.

Strengths

• Based on the authoritative National Forest Inventory England 2022, a major national survey.
• Integrates data from a large range of datasets and owners, providing a consolidated view.
• Specifically designed to support actionable planning for woodland creation and access improvement.

Limitations

• Core underlying inventory data is from 2022, which may not reflect recent changes on the ground.
• The primary intended audience is internal staff, which may limit external applicability or documentation.
• Available documentation is in PDF format, which is less machine-readable than structured data formats.

Provenance

Source

Forestry Commission, primarily derived from the National Forest Inventory England.

Collection Method

Derived and integrated from a large range of existing datasets and data owners.

Time Range

Primary inventory data is for 2022.

Freshness

Dataset record was last updated in April 2026, though core data is from 2022.

Geography

England.